Digital Traveler: A Waze beyond plain map apps

Imagine driving toward your vacation destination, or even taking your regular work commute, and other drivers are feeding you information on traffic tie-ups and the nearby locations for the cheapest gas and dreaded speed traps.

That's the premise and the reality of Waze, an Israel-based start-up founded in 2007, that Google acquired last week for more than $1 billion. Waze is a free app that provides driving directions and navigation for iPhone, iPad, Android, Symbian and Windows Mobile devices. Waze covers 193 countries and is poised to announce that it has 50 million users, spokeswoman Julie Mossler says.

But in some respects, Waze goes way beyond what other popular navigation apps, such as Google Maps, Apple Maps and MapQuest Maps, do, because many of its users actively participate in fine-tuning your drive on the go.

There are several ways that Waze does this. By just running the app, you are passively sending signals to Waze, informing the app about route updates and traffic conditions.

But Waze also allows users to input and view a series of "reports" covering traffic jams, police (hidden or visible), accidents, hazards, road closures, map problems and gas prices, among other categories.

After you initiate navigation, Waze may inform you 2,278 Wazers are nearby and 192 reports are available that may help improve your trip.

For example, if you are driving along using Waze, you sometimes will get an audio and visual alert that a car is stuck along the shoulder a mile ahead, or that a marked police car may be ready to ruin your day with radar beaming up ahead.

Waze sometimes will reroute you around the traffic or other roadside headaches to speed up your trip or make it safer.

During a drive from Sarasota, Fla., to Tampa last week, Waze even sent me a report of rain, and indeed there was a torrential downpour about a mile ahead that forced many cars to abandon the 70-mph speed limit and slow to a 40-mph soggy crawl.

Need to refuel? Just tap "gas" on the app's menu, and Waze will list perhaps 20 gas stations within a few miles of you and provide navigation and directions to the station, along with price information.

With all these reporting capabilities, though, Waze indeed can be distracting. You find yourself viewing your smartphone while driving to find out about the alert indicating that there is a vehicle stopped along the shoulder a few miles ahead, for example.

Waze did implement a hands-free option last year for contributing reports on iPhones about road conditions. The feature uses the iPhone's proximity sensor, and in theory, you can wave your hand in front of the phone and then speak to initiate navigation and make traffic reports. I couldn't get it to work, however.

Apart from that glitch, Waze distinguishes itself because it really is easy to use. Just tap the "navigate" icon, select from a list of previously used or favorite destinations, or enter a new one, and Waze calculates the number of miles and minutes to the endpoint of your route, and the navigation begins.

One winning feature is the ability to share a link with friends, family or colleagues, and they'll be able to view your vehicle's location on a map in real time and get an estimated time of arrival.

Waze can be fallible, though. As I drove through Queensbury, N.Y., the other day, Waze said at one point that I was at the location of a Friendly's restaurant that my kids and I were looking for, although there was nothing but suburban homes.

The beauty of Waze is that it has a fix for that. Just tap "map issue" and select "wrong driving directions," and then the next Wazer looking for Friendly's might not confront the same problem.

Still, Waze is a fun and useful navigation app. It makes you feel as if you are in the company of fellow co-conspirators and traffic reporters as you motor along from point A to B.